


Origins of Inquisitor Aira

by NorroenDyrd



Series: Tall She Was and Golden-Skinned [1]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Backstory, Bonding, Childhood Memories, College of Winterhold Questline, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Loneliness, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Thalmor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-12
Updated: 2017-10-12
Packaged: 2019-01-16 13:12:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12343365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorroenDyrd/pseuds/NorroenDyrd
Summary: A little sketchy biography of an Altmer character who will travel from Tamriel to Thedas, becoming Inquisitor - which I have deemed ornately written enough in places to merit a fan fiction submission.





	Origins of Inquisitor Aira

Her name is Airanarie. The people she allows herself to get close to call her Aira - and there are periods in her life when no-one utters this word for decades.

She grows up a shy, obedient child, trying her best to make her highborn, superiorly bred Altmeri parents approve of her during the rare visits they pay to her chambers and little garden by the sea. Her mother is radiantly beautiful and impeccably refined, cold and prideful amongst other grown-ups, she miraculously becomes far, far warmer when she walks into her daughter’s room. She smiles at Airanarie when the little one gawks in admiration at her elegant outfits, and takes her shopping to Skywatch sometimes, not even scalding her if she runs too fast or knocks things over by accident.

Airanarie likes her mother, and secretly wishes they spent more time together; her father, on the other hand, she likes… not half as much, guilty as it makes her. It must be because of those little tests he puts her through, to train her sense of Altmeri propriety (which he is very big on, being some sort of cones-ull-tant at a Thalmor academy). Whenever there are strangers in the house and Airanarie is led out to greet them, he uses Illusion magic to whisper insults in her ear, unheard by their guests (‘Nothing personal, child, just testing your composure’) or prickles her back and arms with tiny needles of Destruction magic, not strong enough to leave a marking on her skin (so that when she tries, in a stifled, fumbling way, to complain to Mother, he dismisses her claims as nonsense), but strong enough to hurt. Her goal is not to burst into tears in front of everybody and not to make a messy spectacle of herself; she fails, most of the time, which alarms Mother, annoys the guests, but is explained away by Father as 'willful temperament’.

But, thankfully, that is not a regular occurrence, as her parents each have another mansion of their own, where they spend most of the year. Airanarie’s far more constant companion is her Khajiiti caretaker, Purrion (she thinks this is the name her father gave to him, being unable to pronounce the 'cat-man servant’s’ actual Ta'Agra name, which upsets her for some reason). Purrion is big and fluffy and cuddly, so great to nestle against after you have had a nightmare; he teaches Airanarie her very first spells, and shows her the very best places to go to walks to, never once mentioning that waddling knee-deep in sea water while wearing her best dress is inappropriate; he tells the most wonderful bedtime stories, but does not scoff when Airanarie proposes an alternative ending; and his cooking skills manage to make her mouth water even at the sight of icky greens.

Airanarie’s parents mostly leave Purrion to his own devices, only demanding that he give them regular reports on their daughter’s upbringing, and that he not interfere when they arrive and interact with her themselves. But one day, when Airanarie is almost a teenager and Mother comes in alone to check on her (she does it somewhat more frequently than Father, for which the girl is silently grateful), a sea storm locks them all in inside the house for longer than Mother has planned - and the first baffled, then intrigued, then delighted Altmeri lady finds herself roped into all manner of activities that Purrion and her daughter enjoy, from drawing to cooking to telling scary stories while the wind is roaring outside. She greets the first clear sunset after the storm breathless with that fascinating sound (laughter, was it?), both her and Airanarie’s faces covered in smudges from mutual makeovers - and, taking a good long breath of the fresh sea air, she announce that this is the most fun she has had in years… And stays.

From that day forth, and well into Airanarie’s youth, her mother does not leave her side. Together with Purrion, she plays with her, and tutors her, and takes it upon herself to explain to her daughter how and why her body is changing when she discovers blood on her small clothes one morning - and lets the girl confide in her, finally getting to hear out the full story about Father’s little tests. This results in a huge row between them - actually, there are a lot of rows these days, because the high society frowns on the commoner-like camaraderie that has come to exist between that 'odd woman’ and her child. But Airanarie’s mother faces them all down with her usual impenetrable iciness, and continues to enjoy the company of her little girl… And Purrion.

For there is one thing that Airanarie is completely oblivious to until it is too late - until, trembling all over, she finds herself leaning against the doorway, her knees too weak to support her, her breath caught in her chest; while her father’s shadow stretches across the floor, charcoal-black, crossing out the bodies of Mother and Purrion, with shards of magical ice sticking out of their throats. Brought together by caring for the girl, the Altmeri lady and the Khajiiti servant have fallen in love; according to notes that Father reads aloud from Mother’s diary, shaking with rage and disgust, they even fantasized about running away together and starting a new life in some remote corner of the Empire where the Aldmeri Dominion still has no reach. Just the three of them: the young woman, her mother and her father. For throughout all these years, Purrion has been more of a father to Airanarie than the mer who sired her; the mer who did not even particularly care for his daughter or his wife until he found the latter in the arms of 'that furbag’ and killed them both solely to teach them a lesson… Just as he would hurt Airanarie solely to teach her a lesson.

At least, this is what she thinks to herself for a while, during those horrible, empty days that follow the death of the two people she loved most. In time, this wordless scathing grief might have spilled out in a crescendo of fury to rival her father’s murderous outburst, and Airanarie might have stood up against him like she never could as a child. But it does not happen.

After her father is acquitted by a court of his peers (for surely, his wife’s death was her own fault, her own just punishment for dishonouring her family by consorting with an inferior species) and returns home to find the petulant child, who never was too boisterous unless left alone with her mother and Purrion, withdraw into a shell of stubborn, silent sulking, locking herself up in her bedroom alone with her thoughts, he calls in… counselors. Having ties to the Thalmor just like him, they spend many days calling to Airanarie, trying to drill into her head that her mother and that lowly cat do not deserve to be mourned; that she is only feeling unwell because her life lacks true meaning, and service to the Dominion the Thalmor can give her that; the Dominion can discipline her so that she never falls apart again; the Dominion can further hone her magic skills so that she might use them to further a noble cause. Spreading the light of elven glory to the lesser races; and eventually, when the whole world is theirs, undo its imperfect fabric and allow the High Elves to ascend to the state of godhood that their ancestors once had.

Airanarie does not want to give in - but eventually, she does. Because she really has no idea what to do with herself, what reason to find to go on living, what meaning to fill the void with. So, with a hesitant creak, she opens her door and lets the Thalmor in.

At first, she does enjoy her new role in the Aldmeri army; the Thalmor give her a place to belong, a sense of duty, a goal for every new day that actually allows her to sleep soundly at night, without forcing herself to stay awake and stare blankly into nothingness so as to stall the arrival of another pointless tomorrow. She even makes a couple of friends: Ondolemar, young and freshly indoctrinated like her, and Runil, who is older and who she has a tiny crush on. They train together and explore the Dominion together - which is Airanarie’s favourite part, and also the source of her first inklings of doubt, because meeting the Wood Elves and the catfolk and even an occasional human is so fascinating… She can never have enough of their stories, the sights of their architecture, their incredible cuisine… Surely, they cannot really be so much beneath the High Elves?

And then… Then, the Great War breaks out, and Airanarie and her friends are tossed head-first into its crucible. There is so much blood, so much destruction, elves and humans ripping each other apart; and she can no longer tell day from night amid all the smoke, and can no longer hear the sound of her own voice over the ringing in her ears: magic explosions and screams and memories of screams. And oh dear gods, she can still see red from that one time when she shot a fire bolt in a Nord’s face and made his crispy-fried eyeballs fly out of the back of his skull. She is snapping, falling apart, and not even the Thalmor discipline can help her now. Does this mean that she is broken, inferior, like her mother, who brought her doom upon herself by sleeping with a Khajiit? Maybe she ought to seek out those counsellors again, beg them to re-educate her?

When she blurts all of this out to her friends as they make camp amid some jutting ricks on the Gold Coast, Ondolemar looks quietly stunned but not appalled at least; and Runil, the old, experienced, level-headed Runil, takes her hand and says sincerely,

'It is not you who is broken. The Dominion is’.

This stuns Ondolemar even more - but he does not stand in their way when they desert. In fact, if Airanarie looked back, she would have seen the longing in his eyes as he watches her and Runil disappear into the night, and then sets out to work on his magic to weave an illusion of their death.

Once they are away from the combat zone, Runil suggests that they go their separate ways in order to avoid unwanted attention - and Airanarie agrees, mechanically, before she can confess her feelings for him. Like two tiny rocks thrown into the boundless snowy sea, vanish in the heart of the wilds of Skyrim, where the free Nords still follow their old ways. As Airanarie will later learn from bits and pieces of rumours that reach her, Runil makes it by sheer chance. Barely recovering after a run-in with a Dominion patrol, thanks to the help of a human battle matron, Runil settles as an unassuming, kindly healer and eventual priest in the ever-misty city of Falkreath, and finds contentment in doing last rites for the dead and advising people in their grief (not at all like Airanarie was once advised). Airanarie, in turn, moves into an abandoned shack in the woods, and submerges herself in the blissful silence of the wilds, which drowns out some of the screams inside her mind.

She gathers healing herbs, occasionally making her way to the road where she trades the potions she has brewed to the wandering traders. She hunts, too, using a summoned bow to take down the prey (bound weapons are usually her preferred way of engaging in combat or defending herself in general; either that, or shock charges, because the thought of ice magic makes her remember her father, and bursts of flame bring back images of the battlefield). When a lost hunter or berry picker stumbles upon her shack, she treats any injuries they may have suffered while tearing through the undergrowth (occasionally pursued by a bear), uses the Clairvoyance spell to help them find their way home - and when the weather is bad, invites them to dinner, quietly nodding and smiling as they rant to her about their village’s problems. Sometimes, when both of them feel like it, Airanarie and her guest have sex - it does not feel right to call it 'making love’, because, much as she enjoys physical contact with these passing strangers, she barely remembers them a few weeks down the line. She cannot call them her lovers, or her loves, no more than they can call her their personal chef because she made them dinner once (no matter how delicious the meal might have been). And she tells herself that she prefers it this way. Because look where having a lover got her mother.

As decades roll by, wild plants start bursting through the gaps in her shack’s walls and floor. A proper Altmer would have tried to weed them out, because their kind is known for its attempts at subjugating nature and getting it to behave, locking it in the confines of formal gardens and perfectly symmetrical terraces. But Airanarie lets her little green friends flourish, nurturing them with magic, till her shack turns into a veritable green orb of tangling roots and branches, with a little bed and table and cupboard tucked away inside. She feeds her plants and sings to them and caresses their leaves as she walks by; this is what Purrion used to do, and it hurts her a little when she catches herself thinking that… But she keeps doing this little routine anyway.

It is a good life she leads, in her tiny green hermitage, even after the Markarth Incident causes the Thalmor to start paying Skyrim more attention. As fate would have it, one of the agents the Dominion posts in this province to keep an eye out for the local heathens is none other than Ondolemar, promoted and looking very dashing in his brand-new gilded Justiciar robe. He puts a lot of effort into seeking out his two old friends, and supplies them (through a series of mysterious couriers and dead drops in locations described in poetic riddles that the said couriers deliver in sealed envelopes; good old Lem always had a flair for the dramatic) with special magical crystals that can transmit a magical projection of himself to Airanarie and Runil and vice versa.

The initial purpose of this set-up is for Ondolemar to keep the two deserters informed of Thalmor activity, in case they ever have to run; but, in the later years, as his service begins to weigh down on him, he starts contacting them just to alleviate his own loneliness.

'Ugh, Aira, I am so bored in this… craggy wretch of a city, full of damn Nords who have no respect for my authority, and of those stupid, smelly dogs! I swear that if one day drags by like this, I will throw myself against a wall!’

'Aira, Runil… I… I… I don’t know how to describe this… There is this human… a local alchemist’s apprentice… Yesterday, we bumped into one another in the hole the locals call a tavern, and started a conversation… She is so keenly intelligent, and… not… not at all repulsive to look at… and as weary of this city as I am… I think… I think we may be forming a bond?’

'Runil… You are a healer, are you not? Do you happen to know what that ache in my chest may be coming from? It comes in these sharp fits, whenever I catch sight of that human… Oh gods, her name is Muiri, and we have been meeting every evening, and I know it is wrong, but… You two have been a really bad influence on me, do you know that?’

'Blast it all, the Nord barbarians cannot even solve their own crimes! A woman gets gutted in the street, and they just shrug it off! Of course, I shouldn’t care either; these are the affairs of humans, after all - but Muiri’s mistress has grounded her for ruining that potion, and I have to occupy myself with something! Might as well show these brainless bear-huggers how a real Justiciar does his job!’

'Aira? Runil? Are you there? So much has happened… I have to tell… Someone… Apparently, that alchemist crone who took Muiri in is her birth mother, who had to give her up when she was an infant… We all only just found out… And her father - her father is the leader of the Forsworn tribesmen the Nords keep as slaves! And I just helped him and his ilk escape from Cidhna Mine! Why… Why am I enjoying this?’

Runil also has a few confessions of his own to pass through the glowing crystal - which, in a way, mirror the stories Ondolemar tells of this human he has grown un-superiorly attached to.

'I never told you this, but… When I was wounded, and that Nord healer tended to me… Something… Something passed between us… I do not know if it was love; perhaps not, or else I would have been brave enough to stay by her side… But the fact remains: we lay together, and apparently, this chance encounter produced a daughter, whom I never knew of. And she - she is Dragonborn! You know - the one from the Nord legends, with a soul engulfed in flames so ardent that she can wreak destruction just by speaking a few ancient words of power. She… Gods, she is so beautiful and strong… I hope that one day she will forgive me for leaving her mother and going deeper underground… because this has sentenced her to a lonely, miserable childhood, filled with ceaseless torment for her half-elven heritage…’

Airanarie listens and smiles and lets out a gasp of amazement, or two or dozen. Part of her wants to leave her shack behind, to have adventures with her friends like in the old days, to experience these incredible stories of theirs first-hand, to meet Runil’s daughter - because despite that foolish pang at the first mention of him having been intimate with another woman, she is genuinely glad to see him happy… But that part is weak, unsure, half-stifled; the other, far stronger part tells her to stay, to live on among her plants and herbal concoctions, hidden away from all the fighting that is ravaging Skyrim, somewhere out there, as kin turns on kin in a clash between those who want Skyrim to gain independence and those who believe it is safer behind the walls and towers of the Empire (Ondolemar, whose faith in the teachings of the Thalmor shakes the more he mingles with the 'barbarians’, is certain that the Dominion is stoking the flames, because the more humans hate one another, the weaker they are).

But there comes a time when even Airanarie cannot huddle up in her green orb and pretend that the world exists apart from her. A time when a troubled, stiff-voiced Ondolemar calls to his deserter friends to bring their little trio back. Because they have a moral obligation to stop the madness from spreading (and then, as Airanarie hopes, they can go their separate ways, to Markarth and Falkreath and to the beckoning green home in the woods).

Not so long ago, Muiri (who, as far as Airanarie can grasp, is now bonded to Ondolemar in some sort of clandestine Forsworn-style marriage) joined the College of Winterhold to further her magical education. And the news she has shared with her husband of the happenings within the College’s walls is far from uplifting. There is a Thalmor in there - one all three of them used to know, once; one who was among the counselors that swayed Airanarie to the cause - and he is tapping into the energy of some mystical orb of unknown origins (maybe even one beyond this world, as Muiri’s tutors have theorized), believing that it will allow him to take over Tamriel, or destroy the whole of Nirn, or whatever it is his own drunkenness with power whispers to him.

'All that is wrong with the Dominion, embodied in one mer,’ Runil says in a horrified whisper - and together, the three friends vow to put an end to this.

While Muiri and her friends from the College see to the evacuation, Runil’s daughter Eira (yes, the ironic similarity of their names has not escaped her) departs to collect an artefact capable of containing the orb’s power, Ondolemar, Runil, and Airanarie conjure up impromptu portals and rush to the massive smouldering ruin that it now Winterhold, in an attempt to talk the mad mer down (Ondolemar may or may not have left his mother-in-law posing as himself via a glamour charm in Markarth’s Keep so that his higher-ups do not notice his absence).

'Ancano!’ they call to the orb-stealing Thalmor, trying to push close through a whirlpool of wild blue magic that twists around him, spitting and burning at them and knocking them back. 'Ancano no!’

'Ancano yes!’ he cackles, barely looking meric any more, his eyes flooded with the same blue light as what frothes around him, his hair standing on end, lightning dripping from his fingertips (great, now Airanarie will be too afraid to use lightning magic too).

She is the only one who manages to approach him before the pall of angry blue light falls over the approach to the College, sealing off all access (until, hopefully, Runil’s Eira arrives with the artefact). For a few seconds, Airanarie manages to hold Ancano back, repelling his spells with her summoned sword and shield - but for a few seconds only. For the giant orb behind his back soars into the air, its segments sliding apart and beginning to rotate madly around the burning white core, while the air turns into a stream of broiling water, which raises Airanarie up and carries her closer and closer to the orb’s gaping maw… Until she falls in, and dissolves in all the whiteness… And then, the light around her is no longer white but green, contrasting with inky shadows that mould into many-legged monsters, chasing her, snapping their hungry jaws, and why does one of them look like it has her father’s face…

The monsters close in, always behind her no matter how fast she runs - but before they can consume her, an apparition, vaguely shaped like a woman, reaches out and pulls her up, to where she can stand on solid ground again and breathe and… and be gawked and hissed at and slapped into shackles. To where she is a stranger, a freak of nature; where she does not belong.

Airanarie does not know how - but the orb, this Eye of Magnus, has taken her to another realm. An upside down place, a place that is cold in the south and warmth in north; a place where it is humans who believe themselves superior to elves and strive to spread their doctrine to all corners of the world so that their lost god might return; where having magic is believed to be the worst possible sin; where the Dwemer still exist. And now, because her insane journey has left her with a glowing green gash across her hand, which is able to seal portals onto the plane of demons (rather like the Oblivion Gates, she supposes), it falls to Airanarie to save everyone. Which is the exact opposite of hiding away in a woodland shack.

But, funny thing… Even though the alien nature of this world, and the enormity of her task, Airanarie finds her new surroundings becoming more and more like home to her. Because of the people that, once they have overcome their fearful distrust of an otherworldly being, so very tall a d golden-skinned and golden-eyed, are trying their best to ease her world-saviour’s burden.

There is a woman among them who, like her mother, is sheer perfection made flesh, who radiates cold beauty and is unapproachable at first, but warms up once you get to know her. There is a man who, like Airanarie, grew up with parents who were completely different but were forced to tolerate each other to meet society’s expectations. There is an elven girl whose parent (adopted parent, in her case) subjected her to cruel trickery that made her hate herself; and a human who spent many years living all by himself in the wilderness and has the eyes of someone who, too, hears screams inside his head when the night is too dark; and a… huge mountain of a… person, with skin as grey as a Dunmer’s and a pair of ox-like horns, who was lost and purposeless and had to turn himself in to those who sculpted his mind anew because he could not bear living like this any longer - and so many, many more. So many voices guiding and reassuring her, and eagerly calling her 'Aira’.

With them by her side, this lofty goal just might be achievable.


End file.
